'Urbicide' is a Latin formation - as deployed in this chapter, it refers to the total or near-total destruction of cities (poleis) of the ancient Greek/Hellenic world between the 6th and the 4th centuries BCE. Urbicide was an extreme measure of interstate politics, but not as rare as one might have predicted - or hoped. It represented the other, dark side of the ancient Greeks' fierce attachment to their own native polis. In some cases a polis might be removed from the map once and for all (e.g. Arisba on the island of Lesbos). In others, it might be only temporarily annihilated (Thebes). In all cases, the possibility of largescale enslavement of formerly free Greek citizens was ever-present, and often was realised.

It is generally agreed in social scientific scholarship that federal institutions promote efficiency and economic growth in the modern world. This chapter asks whether the same case can be made for antiquity. Political scientists and economists recognize three major mechanisms by which federal institutions promote economic growth: decentralized fiscal decision-making that incentivizes the adoption of policies enhancing local economies; high redistributive capacity that can direct resources where they are most needed; and reliance on local revenues that encourages local governments to invest in public goods that enhance market activity. Although there is some evidence to suggest that these each of these institutional arrangements existed in antiquity, it is argued that there is simply not enough evidence to demonstrate that they did, in fact, lead to economic growth in the ways that the modern theory of fiscal federalism predicts. The chapter then explores several different ways in which federal institutions may have led to economic growth in the case of Greek antiquity – regional property rights and the pooling of complementary resources, shared currency, and enhanced diplomatic power – while cautioning that there is no evidence to prove that there was a causal link between any of these practices and actual economic growth.